My Generation

Last night I read The Young and the Jobless, from The Big Money. It was articles like this that made me want to start a blog about being unemployed in the first place. In it, Katherine Ryder attempts to examine the "schizophrenic" reaction of "Gen Y" to receiving unemployment checks. She asks anonymous sources (her friends, it seems) how they are spending their government issued checks, and is shocked, shocked to find out that most seem to be buying something other than old tire scraps to patch the holes in their worn out shoes. She says that the stories she collected "fulfilled every negative stereotype associated with Generation Y, the so-called entitlement generation", as exemplified by one young man in his 20s who has the audacity to be "very selective" about which job he accepts after being unemployed. I suppose instead, one should simply take a job at the first place that has an opening, and spend the next forty years toiling diligently away, until that day we receive our gold watches and pensions.

Except that, of course, is not how the world works anymore. It's something that I've heard my whole life, and as a group, my generation's getting a good demonstration of it now. Okay, lets back up a few years and see how we got here. Remember the phenomenon of the overworked child? Studies and articles constantly worried that we were taking on too much work, responsibility and worry. That was me. During high school, I rarely slept more than five or six hours a night, and was generally better rested than my peers. Sleep deprivation was to be expected with a schedule like mine; a nearly full load of AP classes, cross-country and track, dance team, mock trial, weekends volunteering at church. The scary part of my high school calendar is that this did not make me a good student; it made me an average student. The exhaustion, stress and physical injuries were endurable because it was all done in pursuit of a goal- a good college, a challenging, fulfilling job, and the ability to Change the World.

We applied to, and were rejected from, Ivy League schools in record numbers, meaning that, unlike the statistics cited in Ms. Ryder's article, we didn't all go to Harvard and take jobs in finance. I went to UC Berkeley, paying in-state tuition at a public school. I was not granted admission to the "Masters of the Universe" club. I never bought a $500.00 clothing accessory, and the art work hanging in my home came from second-hand shops and thrift sales. What I do have in common with those who are enduring what Ms. Ryder calls "privileged unemployment" is that, after all of the effort and energy and hours of missed sleep that got me through school and prepared to enter the work force, I find myself looking for work in an economy with the highest unemployment rate of my lifetime. The New York Times is predicting a "Vast Remaking of the Economy" and the shape it will take is still uncertain. The rewards we (I) expected aren't even available. Taking a job that will simply perpetuate a dying system would likely mean I'd be looking for work again in a few months or years.

In high school, I had an eccentric, possibly mad, government teacher, Mr. C. Mr. C was fond of telling us that, eventually, whether or not they like it, his generation will have to get out of the way and let us take over. But, that means that, whether we like it or not, our generation will have to assume the responsibility of running businesses, government, and families. Right now, we're seeing the folly of the previous generations, and, in our individual ways, deciding how we're about to correct it. That's why, despite the problems I have with her characterization of my cohorts and the analysis she uses to get there, I agree with Ms. Ryder's conclusion: "Generation Y's values are going to define the future labor market, the way the economy is rebuilt, our new way of life". For my part, while I figure it out, I'm spending my unemployment checks on food and bills and, yes, cocktails. Because, damn it, Changing the World is hard, and a girl's gotta do something to keep warm.